Sleuth Wk 43: Bogs, Bez, Bums and the Hamburglar

SleuthSleuth is a sideways glance at the city every week, it's the truth, but Sleuth's truth. He's several people all at once. We give £25 for every story/rumour and piece of absurdity you find for us to publish. Sleuth sometimes even gets serious. We ask for the money back if any legal action follows. Follow Sleuth on twitter @mcrsleuth

CCTV Toilet Scandal In Worsley

Sleuth thanks beer mag, Ale of Two Cities, for this story. They revealed there's a Worsley pub with a CCTV camera right over the urinals which the mag thought was taking the world's worst videos. Turns out the company says it's a dummy camera and is there to discourage 'inappropriate behaviour' - such as, thinks Sleuth, putting perv cameras over toilets. As Ale of Two Cities says, 'Touch of 1984 there... presumably with a fine view of what's on offer'. And the name of the pub in Worsley - The Cock.

Point and shoot

Gusto To Open In November

It’s been seven months since Confidential announced that Gusto, the ‘high-end Italian’ chain of restaurants by Living Ventures (Australasia, Oast House, Manchester House, that lot), were moving into the Grade II listed Elliot House and former city registrar’s office at 151 Deansgate (main image) to open a new ‘flagship Gusto’ for Manchester. Now Sleuth’s been told that the new Gusto (which also has restaurants in Alderley Edge, Cheadle Hulme, Didsbury and Knutsford) will be ready to open at the rear-end of November. Good, Sleuth would hate to see Royle and Bennett's beautiful 1878 building unoccupied. And as Sleuth has said here many times before, Sleuth loves all Italian restaurants and there can never be enough of them...

Elliot House - new home for Gusto

In This Week's Rear View: Sleuth's Most Unlikely Beauty Therapy

Full story here but Sleuth is astonished by this beauty treatment. 'The Ultimate Butt Facial - available at Natura Anti-Ageing Clinic in Manchester, uses the latest peels, lasers and moisturising treatments to polish your posterior to perfection. The treatment, tailored to the individual, can be done in a lunch time, leaving your buns toned, polished, radiant and camera ready, with minimal downtime.' Camera ready? You what? The treatment costs £300. Bum deal, thinks Sleuth.

Sleuth's Friday History Lesson: The Callipygian Venus is shown here. 'Callipygian' means 'beautiful buttocked' in Greek. This statue was found in Sicily and dates from 1st Century AD. It depicts Venus looking backwards at her 'toned, polished, radiant and camera ready' arse.

Grande Plans For Old Granada With Vast New Hotel

Allied London have announced the 1960's Granada HQ building and the adjacent four studios in the south west corner of the city centre will be converted into a 'Miami-style' event hotel called The Grande. There'll be 200 bedrooms and nightly entertainment of music, film, theatre, arts and club events, with hotel guests receiving a pass for all entertainments. This will happen in 2016 and Sleuth is all for the scheme, especially as the plans retain the fine sixties building which has played such a role in British broadcasting history. And anyway, since Sleuth and the rest of the Confidential team are presently housed in the building, he's become sentimental about it.

CGI of Grande

Caffeine & Co And The Soft Brew

Caffeine & Co has also moved into the Granada HQ building - for a year or so until the hotel is realised, click here. It's a cracking fit-out. And the flat whites are as good as ever, but there's a novel caffeine notion as well. This is the 'soft brew' at £3 which at first the macho side of Sleuth's character didn't like the sound of. This is not brewed in the traditional espresso coffeeshop machine, but separately, and is a single estate coffee rather than a blend. Sleuth had the Ethiopian Wonago Yirgacheffe and it was superb, sweet, strong, with less bitterness than the espresso brews. Give it a whirl says Sleuth.

New Caffeine & Co

Odd Curry Awards

Sleuth saw news this week that two Manchester curry houses on the same street in Castlefield (Liverpool Road) had scooped awards at the English Curry Awards 2014 at the AJ Bell Stadium in Eccles. Bollywood Masala took home the award for the ‘best curry in the North West’ and Akbar’s (a few doors down) took ‘home the best in Manchester’. Sleuth thought this very odd, not that the Curry Mile had been overlooked (though Sleuth hears ‘The Mile’ weren’t best pleased), but that you can be the ‘best curry in the North West’ without being the ‘best curry in Manchester’. Silly.

Bez News

At least once a week, Sleuth comes across something in his inbox about former-Happy Mondays maracas-man, Bez, doing something or other somewhere or other around the city. So much so, Sleuth has now decided to add 'Bez News' to this weekly column. So let's get started, what's Bez been up to...

Well, during the upcoming Manchester Science Festival 2014, ar Bez, being a world leader in the field, is to be one of the experts at a debate on fracking at MOSI (see here). Not only that, being an expert in the preservation of bees, Bez is to unveil his first batch of honey from 'Bez's Bees' (he calls it his 'pension plan'), which have been grafting away on the top of the Printworks for a year or so. He's a busy bee that Bez. Or just bored. Tune in next week for the latest round of 'Bez News'.

Bez's Bees

Sleuth's Weirdest Security Protected Item Of The Week

Sleuth reckons Piccadilly Gardens must be one of very few places in the world where a supermarket would feel the need to add a security tag to £4 breaded ham. Then again, Sleuth has heard rumours that McDonald's notorious Hamburglar has been seen lurking around Piccadilly Garden's 'dodgy benches'...

Hamburglar - last seen in Piccadilly Gardens

Sleuth's Weirdest Exhibition Title Of The Week

Yes, this John Rylands Library exhibition, is called Men Who Like Women Who Smell Of Their Jobs. Sleuth isn't sure what it's about even after reading this description, so maybe you have a go. Anyway, Sleuth once went out with this female fishmonger and had to tell her this, "Sorry, but in this case it's hard to love a woman who smells of her job." "You can bugger off too," she said, "ever since you got that job at the sewage works it's just not been the same."

What job does your woman smell of?

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